Boston Max

Across four races, Boston Max has won once and placed once, which works out to a win rate of 25% — one in every four outings. That is a solid return for a young horse still finding his feet, though the recent form figures tell a slightly more complicated story. Before this week's breakthrough, he had finished ninth, twelfth, and thirteenth in his previous three races, so the Dundalk win was not the kind that had been quietly building — it arrived after a rough patch, which makes it all the more significant. Sometimes a horse just needs things to fall right, and Elliott's team clearly found the right opportunity at the right moment.

Elliott himself is one of the most powerful training operations in Ireland, and getting a horse off the mark for the first time is one of the more satisfying jobs in the sport. Whether Boston Max can now build on it remains to be seen, but with a yard firing at this rate and a win under his belt at three years old, there is every reason to follow him closely in the weeks ahead.